Bridging the Language Barrier with Better Places North

Better Places North partnered with Patn in February for a roundtable held in Durham Masonic Hall.

Our panellists at this event looked at the need for closer placemaking ties between agencies and organisations,?along with the barriers and obstacles to better collaboration.

This is a summary of the points discussed on the day.

Institutional Languages

Institutions develop idiosyncratic languages. They become ingrained in how they work. There's a certain inevitability to this because it reflects how cultures grow and mature.

However, when working outside institutional boundaries, language can become a barrier to clarity. Frequently, the words favoured by built environment professionals fail to resonate with the non-professionals who make up communities of end-users.

This has potentially damaging implications because transparency is vital for building trust.

If people don’t understand what different bodies do, or their intentions, this hampers the trust these bodies rely on to deliver successful placemaking strategies.

Silos and Mindsets

The barriers don’t only exist between professional institutions and end-users.

Different disciplines have particular ways of approaching things and this creates silo working conditions.

The lack of understanding between these disciplines can exacerbate complex project delivery arrangements.?

Parts of the construction industry have long been inherently adversarial due to prevailing attitudes and practices, such as sub-contracting competitiveness and blame-shifting. The tightness of margins contributes significantly to these tensions.

Placemakers must play their part in changing this culture, beginning with how they learn to work, interact and collaborate across disciplines. Trust is key and placemakers have to be trustworthy, in the short- and long-term, in order to gain trust from a place’s people, policymakers and business leaders.

Vision and Education

To succeed, every place needs some sort of vision. This doesn’t need to be grandiose or dramatic, but it does need to capture a clear idea of what a specific project or scheme aims to achieve.

Sometimes the vision is there but the ability to both articulate - and deliver it is lacking. But why? Much of this comes back to the earlier issue we raised around silo working and fixed mindsets.

You can't assume you'll carry everyone with you purely on the power of your proposal.

Education needs to come first, both from and for placemakers. It’s not enough for ideas to speak for themselves. They require championing and explaining, especially as the path towards that shared vision will not be straight.

An effective vision invites people in and encourages collaboration. The earlier the better – even before you solidify the brief.

Assembling a Team

Delivering the placemaking vision requires the right people. Realistically, this means balancing various needs – cultural fit, expertise and cost.

In this process, procurement isn't always as helpful as it should be. Again, this is where education is vital in shaping leadership and helping to steer projects in the right direction.

Collaboration yields positive results, but there’s an element of chance where you don’t know how successful the work will be while you’re doing it. It’s only after completion and handover that most projects come to life.

They can only be fully realised by people occupying and using them. Moving beyond consultation to genuine collaboration is a risky.? It is also essential for a place’s vision to be iterated, owned? realised.?

Heritage is Everywhere

Heritage is how you connect people with a place and heritage is everywhere – it’s not reserved for places of designated historical or cultural importance. Rather, it’s the key to unlocking places by connecting directly with a community’s feelings of belonging and shared ownership.

Heritage is part of the human condition. It offers ways of bridging the development language barrier to connect with people meaningfully.

Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zones recognise heritage as a way of unlocking the potential of places and breathing new life into them.

Culture and Placemaking

Is democracy enough to support placemaking? Sound decision-making comes from creating a consensus about the places people wish to inhabit.

It’s not enough to create bold new targets for building more housing.

Placemaking depends on more than volume. For houses to become homes and spaces to become places, there must be enough of a local culture to grow places.

Context is critical.

The Better Places North panel

The contributors at this roundtable were:

Tim Bailey , Head of Practice - Xsite Architecture

Alison Clark , Director of Culture, Sport and Tourism - Durham County Council

Deborah Cross , North Yorkshire Council

Lianna Francis-Kelly , Partnership Leader - Historic England

Tony Gates , CEO - Northumberland National Park

Insiyah Khushnood , Senior Development Manager - Igloo Regeneration

Lisa Mcfarlane , Director and Conservation Architect - Seven Architecture

Stephen Morgan-Hyland , Founder and Director - Sevo Planning

Sarie Mairs Slee , Strategic Lead - Northern Place and Culture Partnership

William Seabrook , Founder - Patn